Ietsugu
家次 (Ietsugu)
Lineage: the signature does not state the generation
A lineage of Kaga swordsmiths, from the mid-Muromachi period to the early Edo period, at the heart of the Hashizume line; for its style, close to that of Aoe in Bitchū, it is called Kaga Aoe.
Profile
Ietsugu is the name of a lineage of swordsmiths in Kaga province. The line begins with Kunitsugu, who came from Echizen in the mid-Muromachi period; his son, Shōgen Ietsugu, the first of the name, settled in Hashizume, in the Nomi district, which is why his blades are called Hashizume-mono. For its style, close to that of Aoe in Bitchū, the lineage is known as Kaga Aoe.
There are blades signed Ietsugu from the 15th to the 17th century, among them a katana dated 1522. The name continued for two more generations in the shintō period, with few works, and the lineage is thought to have died out in the early Edo period. When the Maeda moved to Kanazawa in 1583, Shōgen Ietsugu was already counted among the smiths long settled in Kaga.
Monograph
Ietsugu (家次)
A lineage of Kaga swordsmiths, between what is documented and what is not known, with the level of evidence of each fact.
Read the monograph
Notable works
- Katana signed Kashū Fujiwara-jū Ietsugu saku and dated August 1522, in the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History.
Rankings
- Listed in Tomita Kiyama’s ranking of shintō smiths (1935), in the unranked list